2001 Winner
In this riveting book, Michael Burleigh sets Nazi Germany in a European context, showing how the Third Reich's abandonment of liberal democracy, decency and tolerance was widespread in the Europe of the period. He shows how a radical, pseudo-religious movement, led by an oddity with dazzling demagogic talents, seemed to offer salvation to a German exhausted by war, depression and galloping inflation.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/the-third-reich-by-michael-burleigh

2001 Shortlist
Trilobite! is an unashamedly trilobito-centric view of the world unravelling the history of the exotic, crustacean-like animals which dominated the seas for three hundred million years. These arthropods witnessed continents move, mountain chains elevated and eroded; they survived ice ages and volcanic eruptions, evolving and adapting exquisitely to their environment. They watched through their crystal eyes whilst life evolved. Their own evolution calibrated geological time itself.

Structured like a detective story, this is a light, but highly informative account of the wonders of scientific discovery and an engaging, quirky and fascinating introduction to evolution.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/trilobite-eyewitness-to-evolution-by-richard-fortey

2001 Shortlist
During the 20th century, Russia, Ukraine and other territories of the former Soviet Union experienced more violent and avoidable deaths than anywhere else on earth. Two World Wars and one Civil War, state-created famines and purges are only the most significant chapters in an unrelenting epic of destruction. How did Russians cope with loss and bereavement on such a vast scale? How does such a society mourn, and how does it treat its dead? This study opens with a description of the ornate, public services of the old Orthodox rite and traces the various attempts to impose an acceptable and emotionally fulfilling atheist alternative as Bolshevism bore down on public and private rituals of all kinds. Untold millions of Russians were forbidden to mourn their loved ones who died as enemies of the people, kulaks, prisoners of war or vanished victims of the purges. Catherine Merridale has interwoven the history of the modern Russian empire with the private memories of those left behind, the bereaved, and attempts to understand how they dealt with loss.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/night-of-stone-by-catherine-merridale

2001 Shortlist
From phenomenally precocious schoolboy he became Europe's most shocking and exhilarating poet, author of poems that range from the exquisite to the obscene. But this brief, five-year period as the enfant-terrible of French literature is only one small side of Rimbaud's story. Robb takes us on a biographical journey through three continents and many different identities.

Rimbaud emerges from this stunning work of biographical scholarship and historical imagination as an even more complex, ambiguous and fascinating figure than ever before.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/rimbaud-by-graham-robb

2001 Shortlist
Catherine the Great’s lover, secret husband and partner in the Russian empire, this biography restores Potemkin to his place as a colossus of the eighteenth century. Simon Sebag Montefiore illustrates the life of ‘the one-eyed giant’, a gifted statesman, seducer of women and favourite of Catherine.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/prince-of-princes-by-simon-sebag-montefiore

2001 Shortlist
The third and final instalment on the life of Britain’s greatest economist by Robert Skidelsky draws parallels on the subject’s own ill health with the interwar economy, his pivotal contribution to the war effort finances and post war economic struggle.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/john-maynard-keynes-by-robert-skidelsky

2002 Winner
This book brings together the personalities, ideals and prejudices of the people who shaped the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, after ‘the war to end all wars’. Macmillan argues that the peacemakers – at its heart the three great leaders Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau - have been unfairly made scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later; it offers a prismatic view of the moment when much of the modern world was first sketched out.

The book is now published as Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/peacemakers-by-margaret-macmillan

2002 Shortlist
Eamon Duffy uses the written accounts of a sixteenth-century country priest - Sir Christopher Trychay - to reveal Morebath’s complex social life, its strains, tensions and conflicting personalities, and its busy pre-Reformation piety. They also offer us a unique window into a rural world in crisis as the reformation progressed. Through Sir Christopher’s eyes, or rather, through his voice – for he wrote these accounts to be read aloud to his parishioners - we catch a rare glimpse of life and death in an English village.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/the-voices-of-morebath-by-eamon-duffy

2002 Shortlist
The Snow Geese is William Fiennes’s first book; a blend of autobiography, reportage and natural science that follows the remarkable journey of migrating Snow Geese. Fiennes follows the snow geese on their long journey home to the Canadian Artic, from Delaware, California and the Gulf of Mexico, writing not only of the geese, but of the grace of homecomings and the strange gravity that home exerts.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/snow-geese-by-william-fiennes

2002 Shortlist
The Invention of Clouds is the true story of Luke Howard, an amateur meteorologist who in 1802 named the clouds – a defining point in natural history and meteorology. He also became a cult figure for Romantics such as Coleridge, Shelley and Goethe. Although his work is still the basis of modern meteorology, he himself has, until now, been overlooked. In this mix of biography, history and science, Hamblyn means to restore him, his cultural context and the science he loved, to life.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/the-invention-of-clouds-by-richard-hamblyn

2002 Shortlist
From the admiralty to the miner's strike, from the Battle of Britain to eventual victory over Nazi Germany, Churchill oversaw some of the most important events the world has ever seen. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for his personal writing and cautioning against a powerful Soviet Russia in his later years in office, his larger-than-life and complex personality has continued to fascinate writers and historians.

In this comprehensive biography, Roy Jenkins faithfully presents these events, while also managing to convey the contradictions and quirks in Churchill's character. Weaving together in-depth analysis and brilliant historical research, Jenkins has succeeded in crafting this magnificent one-volume account packed with insights that only a fellow politician can convey.

Bringing to life the statesman, writer, speaker and leader, Churchill is packed with insights into one of the most important figures of the twentieth century.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/churchill-by-roy-jenkins

2002 Shortlist
As Milosevic comes to trial for war crimes, Brendan Simms focuses again on the war in Bosnia and on the world’s response to it. He asks whether the international community could have averted this tragedy, or at least have brought the Bosnian war to a speedier conclusion. He also questions whether the British government bears responsibility for policies that led to the prolonging of the bloodiest European conflict since the Second World War.

https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/books-and-authors/unfinest-hour-by-brendan-simms